


Blue (For Certain Values of Blue) Romance (Romance Not Included)

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternian Empire, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Non-Sexual Slavery, Power Imbalance, Troll Culture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 11:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which an Alien Wage Slave With Few Prospects for Advancement Becomes Entangled in a Feud With a Heretical Young Legislacerator and the Newly Enthroned Grand Highblood, Featuring Xenoconciliatory Relationships, Flipped Tables, Graphic Caliginous Flirtation, Dubiously Successful Auspistizing, Chucklevoodoos and Subversive Humor.</p><p>Or, the one where Dave the barista is swept off his feet by a pair of hot and classy motherfuckers who never should have been together.</p><p>Or, <i>I have had it with these ashflirting aliens in my motherfucking shop.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OtherCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/gifts).



> [Othercat's prompt on the Kink meme](http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/39716.html?thread=44443940#cmt44443940): _So there was a TV show meme on Tumblr. You basically clicked and dragged a gif that would tell you what the title, genre and setting would be. I would like to see a fic based off of this:_
> 
> _Title: Blue Romance_
> 
> _Genre: Action/Horror_
> 
> _Main character: works in a coffee shop_
> 
> _In Which an Alien Wage Slave With Few Prospects for Advancement Becomes Entangled in a Feud With a Heretical Young Legislacerator and the Newly Enthroned Grand Highblood, Featuring Xenosexual Relationships, Flipped Tables, Graphic Caliginous Flirtation, Unsuccessful Auspistizing, Threesomes, Chucklevoodoos and Subversive Humor_
> 
> _Give me action/horror with unexpected funny._
> 
> I edited it a bit cause woo conciliatory porn. u.u-b

The thing about the coffee shop is, it's a neutral place. The watering spot in the jungle. Mostly by tradition, though they do have a couple of bouncers, but the tradition is older than Dave is. You fight inside the shop, you get cut off and kicked out, since obviously the beverages available in this fine hall of sustenance are too strong for you.

You get your ambush on poor assholes who ate too many pastries with eye jelly and filled their bladder to the bursting point _outside_ of the shop. The peace of the watering hole is absolute.

In short, Mowgli would be pissed as hell by this travesty.

Mowgli is fake and also not here, but Dave is, and he mops up enough acidic, sticky, or otherwise real fucking odoriferous beverage spills from the floor in the course of a normal day. Troll blood is thick and smeary, and it stains.

Also he's been having the week from hell. They have a new supervisor -- culled good ole Lartey to take her place, yet another method of promotion Dave is barred from -- and the bag of tentadicks believes the little spending money they get and leave of the building outside working hours are privileges none of them have earned; they apparently need to shape up and also he doesn't trust any of them not to use their leave to visit slave underground rebellion rings.

That fuckhead Ragnar's entirely right, but that doesn't stop Dave being pissed as hell about it, half because he did nothing to be distrusted that way (nothing he was ever caught at, at least) and it's not _fair_ , and half because he's got friends and plans to keep updated on, damn it.

It's been a bad week and it's a bad night and promising to get worse and the bouncer is buried in her tea, pretending not to see the commotion.

Last time they were around, the pair of wriggledicks in the far corner ruined a booth and Ragnar shaved off everyone's wages to have it repaired.

He takes the tray off Maya's old gnarled hands, gives her a tiny "go back to the bar" nod without looking away from them, sweeps through the rapidly emptying tables.

"Cherry pie, darling! How's it--"

Picks up the legislacerator's mug, places it onto his tray.

"--I was still drinking that," she says, vaguely nonplussed. The giant skeleton sitting in front of her laughs.

Dave picks up his faygo bottle.

A clawed hand swishes by, almost flays his wrist open; he flashsteps out of range, steps back in as the troll blinks, deposits two chit-reading machines on the table one after the other, click, click.

He is so calm and smooth, so far transcending cool he could shit out an icicle. And then spit them on it.

"The fuck you playing at up, monkey?"

The taller troll's voice has that fake-friendly, see-sawing note in it that makes the hair on the back of Dave's nape rise. He knows the uniform means something important and special.

From his side of the cultural divide it's so ridiculous it stops being funny and just becomes really, really lame.

"Really, Dave!" the legislacerator says, pretending annoyed to hide some real annoyance, some confusion. "I thought I was one of your favorite customers!"

He doesn't turn his head to look at her, just stares ahead -- losing even an inch of peripheral vision on the clown strikes him as too stupid to live. "You were, ma'am, until you saw fit to flout the rules and laws of this establishment. Welp, game over, you lose, do not insert more credit, just collect your ass cheeks and let someone else have the nicely warmed seat."

Did he just say that to a customer, a part of him wonders vaguely. He is going to die. Too stupid to live pretty much defines him today. But Ragnar will throw a fit and sue them for the loss of manpower incurred, and the Mayor and John and Rose will know that at least he didn't die cowering, so hey, as ends go, it could be worse. Slightly worse.

The dude troll lets out a braying laugh. It would almost be dorky-funny if it didn't sound so mean.

"As for you, sir, we do not allow outside beverages in this establishment. We also do not allow bloodletting, willful destruction of furniture, and psychic interference with the servers."

He says it teeth clenched, because he can feel the mind claws going down his figurative spine there. They're kind of really fucking obvious.

"You got all your knowledge on of who I am to be, motherfucker?"

"Yes, sir. You're someone who breaks the shit out of my place of work in order to play games of footsie so lame they only get you laid out of pity. Which shows there's something maybe not quite optimal in your flirting method. And then who leaves without picking up his tab. So in fact, whoops, look at that, you are not a customer of this establishment."

This time it's the tealblood who laughs, grating and high-pitched (deliberately so, he thinks; her speaking voice is low and oddly gravelly for someone her size.)

"Nice shot!" she says, and grins up sort-of at him. "Very well. What shall we do to reclaim the right to enjoy this fine place?"

Fine place, his ass, it's just the closest to their... judicial... thingamagig, he doesn't care what they really do in that building, a human would only see the inside of it as a document mule or as evidence. Anyway the coffee shop is vaguely lame and scuffed; it sees a lot of travel and therefore a lot of use. It's almost dawn now and the usual crowd has cleared out, and he's the one who'll have to stay up all day to replace whatever they manage to ruin before he has to open tomorrow.

He is so done with trolls.

"You could either break up or stop coming on dates here."

"Dates?" she snorts, mouth pursing. "He follows me!"

"Bitch can't ever lose my ass, that's as up and good as an invitation."

"Oh please, with your reek I could lose you easily. I am not going to let you chase me out of my favorite--"

Dave hisses between clenched teeth. (He can't growl convincingly to troll ears, but he can do that.) "Oh my god, are you assholes listening to yourselves? I don't know if you guys are lying to flirt meaner but if you're not then one, stalking's wrong no matter what quadrant, and two this is not your coffee shop it's my coffee shop. Now pay and get the fuck out before I throw you both out, I am so sick and tired of you assholes thinking you're too good to check your weapons at the door like the rest of the guests, like you think you're badass outlaws and this is the Far Fucking West, I could stab you in the ass with my tray, I swear to fuck. You will shit out drink coasters for a perigee."

The clownpriest fuck and the pointy slaughterlawyer burst out laughing together, and then freeze, and give each other murdering looks. Dave tucks the confiscated drinks against his chest with one arm so he can slash his tray vertically between them to break all eye contact.

"Chit reader. Door. In that order."

Both of them are, once again, giving him the same look -- long, considering, startled and amused both. He's so glad he can entertain his so-called betters with his adorable sass. Anyway the bouncer and her teammate are getting up now, prodded by Ragnar, coming toward them, and the clown fuck and the lawyer fuck give them dismissive looks and finally, _finally_ decide to swipe their fucking cards and get up to leave.

Dave fake-nonsmoothly steps on the clown's foot when he stretches it under the table to trip the lawyer, and then blocks her way out so they won't bump into each other on their way to the door -- she was the farthest one from the door, it's her fault.

The bouncers give them nonplussed looks and let them pass, Arike slightly faster on the draw, following them at a respectful distance to make sure they leave.

Joke's on them, really, Arike and Lyewel weren't coming as his backup, they were coming to drag him to the backroom and apologize to such highblooded guests oh my lord so sorry I cannot fathom what's wrong with the help today.

If that wouldn't stop him putting in all his working hours, he's sure Ragnar would have him actually, real-life whipped, like they do for criminals. As it is, Dave is just sent to bed without supper. He'll be lucky to see any salary for the next week.

If he never sees those fuckers again it'll be too soon.

\--

Two days later Mike comes to free him from the backroom and the awesome shoulder muscles he was developing thanks to all those crates to tell him two guests have requested he attend them specifically.

Somehow he guess who they are before he even sees them, using the most accurate divination method of asking himself and the uncaring heavens "Now what would chafe my glorious buttocks the worst?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Hi!" the slaughterlawyer says, all teeth out, when he walks up to their booth. 

This isn't the kind of establishment where the baristas wait on the patrons. Apparently she went through the counter -- she's got a cup -- but her hell clown hate-boyfriend didn't, considering the menu Lexi pushed into Dave's hands before shoving him out into the main room and the empty table before him.

Dave doesn't understand either of these assholes. Fucking aliens. She death-trap grins like she wants him closer; he sneer-leers like he's daring him to try. Approaching their table feels like entering a cholerbear cage. (Or a lion. He supposes. Been a while since he thought about Earth fauna. It was so long ago he's starting to forget the appropriate number of mouths.)

Dave has spent the last two days working himself into exhaustion. Last night -- day, fuck trolls, they're too weird -- he dreamed of Rose in a dentist uniform strapping him down and going to town on his back molars while asking him questions he couldn't answer, his mouth being full of death implements. Questions such as "And how long have you had this death wish, Mister Strider, hmm?" He's just... he's not sure if he's back to more normal levels of couldn't care less or if it's the exhaustion talking, but his eyelid barely twitches behind his shades.

They're still not a waiting on patrons kind of establishment. He doesn't care that the taller asshole is decked in some shade of purple-blue.

"What'll it be?" he asks, bland-faced, holding his pad ready.

"Not even up and saying hi, motherfucker?"

... Fff. Not worth it. "Hi," he deadpans. "What'll it be."

The dude's eyebrow goes all quirked behind the paint but the stupid coat of gloopy tackiness makes it hard to read accurately. Not murderous yet, so who cares. "What you got?"

"Everything listed on this menu," Dave points out in his best smooth, bland voice, pointing at the menu he left on the table with his pencil. He doesn't make a quip about illiteracy and-or blindness, he isn't sure how.

Judge Dredd doesn't go for any of this easy material he's handing her, which has Dave stealing her a glance, but her lips are pursed in an oddly quizzical way and she's not-quite-staring at him. She has proved to possess an uncanny ability to notice when he stares back, even with his shades in the way, so he stares at the wall instead as he waits.

"Hit me up with some wicked elixir," the clown finally decides, surprising fuckall no one. Woo. Faygo it is then. Dave would love to say they don't serve that shit here but considering how close they are to the church? Yeah, they're stocked.

He presses the point of his stylus on his notepad, the picture of the perfect waiter, look at that, he should be working an upscale restaurant instead of this dive. "What color, sir?" He doesn't ask what flavor, they all taste the exact same cocktail of chemicals and sweeteners to him.

The clown reclines in his tiny booth in a way that'll have his bony ass slip off the edge and land under the table in a second, yet somehow doesn't cross the event horizon quite yet. His lurid gaze slips off Dave like he's stopped being here, the way pretty much every other customer looks right through him. "Best motherfucking color, what else color do I be staining my lips with."

He's making a show of his deathly boredom, and Law-and-Order over here isn't doing her part to keep him entertained.

Good, maybe he'll wander off. Dave pretends to write something down. "Ma'am?"

"I have what I need, thank you." She smiles, perfectly polite.

Dave doesn't know what the fuck she has the gall to be disappointed about, but hey, he doesn't care. He is Mister Gives No Fucks today. The fuck-giving season has come to an end and now comes the blanketing cold of No1Curr.

He dodges behind the counter doing his best impression of a butlerbot, comes back the same way. He's put the faygo bottle standing up on his tray on a coaster. He is channeling Rose.

The lawyer's head snaps around when he comes back, and she stares; the clown straightens sloooowly, like he wants to make it a point that even sitting down he's taller than Dave or almost.

"What helldamned heretic color is that, motherfucker."

Dave gives a smooth, perfectly measured butlery bow. John would pop a hernia laughing. "Wild Cherry Arterial Spray, sir. Enjoy."

The Teal Crusader cracks up so loud, half the customers turn to glare. (Then they see her hate beau and turn right back and pretend they saw nothing. Pff.) "Oh shut up, Gamzee, it's fair, you didn't say it out loud."

Apparently-Gamzee gives the bottle a disgusted look. "Mother _fuck_."

"There, there, you're in luck! This is the only color I'm entirely willing to take off your hands."

"Bitch, I will shank you."

They're bickering again. Dave is done serving them, so he turns on his heels and walks away.

"Dave, wait!" she calls him back. Oh jesus asslord buttercup _what_.

It probably shows somehow to her freaky radarsense, because she grins a little wider. "Sit down with us a minute!"

"I do have an actual job to be getting on with," Dave says before he can stop himself.

"You could encourage us to stay and spend money on outrageously tasty confections," she says, managing somehow to even sound serious. Goddamn but her bullshit skills are impressive.

"We have nothing that fits the description," Dave says.

She tries on a charming crocodile grin. "We'll compensate you for your time?"

"I understand how the décor might mislead you, but this is not _actually_ a brothel."

The clown makes a disdainful snorty noise a bit like a gunshot or someone's disapproving great-aunt Mabel. "Like I'd be all to paying a caegar for your pasty alien ass. You want we ask your manager?"

Dave does not grit his teeth, but he does suck in a bit at them. He already knows what Ragnar would say at that. Any customer Teal and up might as well be the Empress.

He's gonna have to make up the wasted time later, too, he bets.

Like hell if he's sharing either of their benches. He drags a chair from another table in and sits in the aisle. He wonders if he should keep up the butlering. He wants to snark back and tell them to fuck off, they're not respecting him so why should be respect them, right?

Maybe 'cause he's part of the business assets and they're nobility, more or less. Yeah, maybe that.

Anyway butlering it up seems to frustrate her, so. He sits with his knees together, his hands on his thighs, his back ruler-straight.

"What may I provide Sir and Madam with?"

She sips at her drink as she considers Dave, then sneaks her hate-squeeze a speaking look, which he ignores in order to plop a little finger in his ear and root around.

"Tell us about yourself, Dave!"

 _Why the **fuck**_. _Does she want to know. **Why**._ "My name is Dave," he says blandly. The clown's eyes narrow like he's getting bored of his sass. No sass here, gentlemen. "I'm eleven sweeps old. My sex and gender are both male. I weigh approximately thirty-two Imperial stones. I used to be right-handed, as is the norm in my species, but I was trained to be ambidextrous. My favorite pastime is sleeping."

He bites his tongue on 'this is my natural hair color' because it's pretty much daring them to ask if they can check and yeah, he has a feeling that the off-putting asshole flirting technique might be counterproductive in this case. They're too interested as it is.

"That was remarkably uninformative!" she says, like she approves.

"Why do we give a shit," the clown complains, and strangles the cap off his Faygo.

He drinks down half the bottle in one go, and then pauses to glare sullenly at it. Dave keeps his head aimed perfectly forward so the creep can't see he's watching. He has to admit it gives him a little pinch of vindictive satisfaction, which is ridiculously pathetic. Wow, he got the dude to drink something in a color he doesn't approve of, what a masterstroke. Dave is an evil genius. Soon the Empire will be his.

"Caegar for your thoughts?" she asks without warning, leaning right into his face. Does she think they're at court? Shit, he almost jumped. He can't believe he used to find her funny. She's a bag of dicks. Dragging him into this mess because she--

"The defendant is taking much too long coming up with the truth! If indeed this is the truth he's coming up with."

"Why don't you be shutting your blathertrap around that lawyery heap of shit what's your filthy tongue," clown-dude groans. "The world goes duller as you up and draw breath."

Her claws twitch imperceptibly on the coffee cup. Dave would almost be happy, if this were anyone else saying it.

"One might wonder why you have not seen fit to brighten your day with a little spot of quadrant-murder!" she retorts with a bright, fake smile.

She's quivering with an odd tension. Dave doesn't get their relationship, sometimes it's like they're some kind of old beloatheds who've grown bored with how much they know each other, and sometimes it's, he's not sure. Maybe it's actually caliginous passion, not like he's equipped to understand jack shit about that feel. Spades are only good for digging up weeds with.

"One might fucking wonder indeed."

They stare at each other. Dave stares at the window behind them.

They sneak him a glance with odd unison, like... they just remembered he's here, like they actually have enough shame between the two of them to be bothered by that? Yeah fucking right. Dave looks down at his nails. Hm, scuffed.

Clowny oozes down on his seat until he must have none of his ass left on the bench, lids grown sleepy; he gazes out. Judgey deflates, nose in her cup, all her angles go soft.

"That was a shitty creepnasty thought from the very start," Clowny mutters at her, with an edge of nasty behind the tired disgust, "but what else from cowardly swill-blooded--" and suddenly she's on the table.

She snatches his horn and Dave has been around trolls long enough that his eyebrows go up all on their own, and she drags him in, lip curled. She's going to break her coffee cup on his skull, and then they'll likely proceed to beat each other up with the booth and _Jesus fucking Christ, no_.

"The first of you who moves," he says almost calmly, "had better be moving to get the fuck out of this shop."

They've frozen, both of them, her when Dave's hand found her horn, him with his orange-purple bug eyes staring hardcore at it, like he's never seen cadaver-pale grasping fronds on a horn before. He figures he had better lay down the law before they get past the shock and fall back into nasty.

"You, unhand his fucking horn. _You_ , if you use it to go for her I am putting that bottle up your asshole."

They're both crackling with tension and it's not like he's holding a knife, he doesn't get why neither of them is shoving him off. Slowly her fingers uncurl, one by one; she makes a show of lifting her hand away. His head tilts back against the padded seat slowly, just as pointedly. Dave guides her back off the table and into her chair, and lets go.

Shit. He is so fired.

Haha just kidding. He'd just be sold some other place. The whip might feature in his near future, though.

They're both staring at him now; her whole body is angled his way, and the clown's might not be, as he flops with his hands in his pockets like he thinks he's an emo human teen, but his long horns make it even more obvious how much his head tilts toward Dave.

"Right." Right. What now.

He's so tired of their bullshit. He gets up; he hasn't been invited to take his leave but after manhandling them he thinks that ship has sailed and then been sunk three miles in.

"It's about the time you usually go home," he tells the murderlawyer. "By which I mean, _go home_. Both of you go home." Shit, he's got a headache. He massages the bridge of his nose, mutters, "if tomorrow when you two assholes inevitably invade this place again I hear any bitching about stalking on the way back I am going to explode my brand-new aneurism so hard the whole block will be painted red."

There's a second of silence, and then she's up on her feet, gathering her bag and her weirdass laptop. She's not grinning, quite, but there's a smile on her face that he averts his eyes from, disturbed. Trolls are so twisted. How is this a situation to smile about?

Clowny waits a bit longer, to make a point, but he extracts himself from his booth eventually, and Dave proves all over again that his biggest enemy is his own fucking mouth.

"Ah --" whoops, he only knows his first name. What the fuck ever. "Gamzee."

Dude doesn't say a thing, just pauses, just stares at him, disturbingly intense.

Dave is so fucking glad for the shades. Creep. At least the lawyer is using the time to saunter out of the door. "Don't forget to stop by the counter and pay your tab."

He starts cleaning the table, ignoring him again as he storms off. He's surprised as shit when he glances back and sees him looming over poor Omar at the counter. 

They're gone and the table is clean. Dave returns his chair and busses the empties back to the counter. Ragnar is standing there in the door to the backroom, giving him such a weird look Dave expects to be grabbed by the ear and dragged off in full view of the rest of the clientele for a good ass-chewing.

But the old bastard doesn't tell him a good goddamn thing, not a single complaint, doesn't even tell him to fix his posture or anything.

He just goes away, muttering to himself, "no accounting for taste," and Dave stands there behind the counter staring at the swinging door until Maya taps his shoulder with her gnarly old lady's hand and asks -- quietly, so the fucking trolls won't complain about the gross display of affection -- if he's okay.

He manages to make it to the employees' toilets before he starts giggling hysterically.

Should he feel molested? He should probably feel molested. Fucking grayfaces as good as tricked him into macking on them in public. Jesus _dick_ that was quadranty shit all right.

They want ashen? Okay, yeah, he'll end this mess for them. He is going to _poison all their drinks_. See if he won't. Okay, maybe not poison, he doesn't know where to get any. Laxatives, though!

No, wait, talk about frying pan and fire. That'd probably net him a pitch sandwich.

Somehow he's not too surprised later that morning when Ragnar denies his request for sick leave out of hand.


End file.
